The present invention relates to a method of automatically distributing received documents, and more particularly to a method of automatically distributing received documents where the documents received through a facsimile apparatus are outputted to a plurality of computers.
A facsimile apparatus having a mail box function has been widely used. FIG. 6 shows block diagram of a storage area of an image information memory of the facsimile apparatus.
As shown in FIG. 6, the storage area of the image information memory has a general document memory section A and a mail box area B. In the general document memory section A received documents are stored whose mailing addresses are not assigned in the mail box area B, while in the mail box area B received documents are stored which are supposed to be distributed to predetermined mail boxes. The mail box memory area corresponds to a previously registered password.
If the protocol contains mail-box-specifying information, then the incoming document is stored in the mail box area (hereinafter simply referred to as mail box) in accordance with the specified information, so that only a person who inputs that password can take out the stored data.
Recently, a system has been used where a facsimile apparatus is remotely controlled by inputting a password from a personal computer (referred to as PC hereinafter) so as to print out the document stored in the mail box with the printer of the facsimile apparatus.
The aforementioned prior art apparatus has the following drawbacks.
A limited memory size is previously assigned to the mail box. Meanwhile, the mail box in the facsimile apparatus is usually used by a plurality of subscribers. Thus, when a large amount of document storage space is used for a specific subscriber, only a limited memory area is available to the other subscribers.
The present invention has an object to solve the aforementioned drawbacks, and provides a method of automatically distributing received documents such that the received documents are quickly delivered to right persons, thus alleviating the load on memory means of the facsimile apparatus.
In order to resolve the aforementioned drawbacks of the prior art, the present invention is characterized in that a plurality of computers, each of which having at least one mail box, are connected to a facsimile apparatus via a network so that a document received through the facsimile apparatus is outputted to a specific mail box within the plurality of computers in accordance with protocol commands received together with the document.
According to the present invention of the aforementioned construction, the facsimile apparatus distributes the received document to a predetermined mail box in accordance with the protocol. Thus, the image information memory section of the facsimile apparatus is used only as a means for temporarily storing documents received for each subscriber who has a computer mail box. Thus, most of the facsimile apparatus memory area is available for use by subscribers of the mail box within the facsimile apparatus.